


the kiss you placed upon my heart (there still remains a lonely mark)

by staticfiction



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Paranormal Romance, Some almost sexy times but not really, Urban Fantasy, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 07:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16363229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticfiction/pseuds/staticfiction
Summary: Here is what Sungjin doesn’t tell you: when you look a demon in the eye and the demon stares back into your soul, you become Marked for Death and have only ninety-nine days left to live before you die a most horrific death. Or, the one where Sungjin is a demon who hunts other demons and you...you're collateral damage.





	the kiss you placed upon my heart (there still remains a lonely mark)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reflectionslie (fallsink)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallsink/gifts).



> Or, as I like to call it: once again, this cliche called love tries to save the world.

Here is what Sungjin doesn’t tell you: when you look a demon in the eye and the demon stares back into your soul, you become Marked for Death and have only ninety-nine days left to live before you die a most horrific death so unspeakable it is a curse shrouded in myth and never spoken outside hushed whispers and ciphers on ancient parchment.

The end will be found in your death, but before there is an end there is a start, and yours begins in the quiet hours of sunrise, in the grey skies in between skyscrapers and the faint yellow light that touches the edges of the antique shop where you work and live.

The day will be bright, a perfect morning with the expanse of azure sky brushed with white tips of a stray wispy cloud drawn like an artist’s languid strokes on canvas. It will be a hot day, but you’ve always been a summer child and there’s always something to look forward to in the heat of summer sunshine.

At least, that’s what you used to believe, before you learned better than to think that darkness is simply the absence of light.

 

***

 

In the grand scheme of contemporary society,  _ You Were Beautiful _ , the antique shop you inherited at your parents’ passing is a wholly unimportant business.

At most it’s a novelty to tourists, if there were even tourists who were careless enough to lose their way through the uphills and vistas, and inroads and steep stair-stepped sidewalks to find the quaint little shop. Upon entering, a bright bell tinkles above the door but it’s purpose is more of a warning than an indication of what’s on the inside. Once you cross the threshold, you are immediately assaulted with the overwhelming sensation to step back outside to a world you recognize but curiosity urges your forward. The shop feels narrow and dizzyingly crowded, with shelves going up to the ceiling and tables pressed so close to each other their shadows blend together and fade smoothly into the display cases behind. One can look and look and still get the feeling the store has no end.

The lack of curation makes it look like a poor excuse for hoarding. It’s easy to get lost in the period furniture, mistake lampshades for guideposts, and walk under seashell chandeliers as though they were doorways. There are no empty spaces here. Every nook and cranny is filled with pocket watches, little figurines, dolls, and other bits and baubles. Even the ceiling is not spared, decorated with chandeliers and light bulbs tied together like a string of pearls. A mannequin dressed in traditional wear stands watch in one corner, a grandfather clock that does not tell time in the other. On the counter is a small treasure chest. The key is somewhere in the store, but it feels like too much work to look for it, you’ve convinced yourself mystery makes it more interesting. 

Sometimes you think you’d suffocate here, run out of air and, because no one would think to look for you, mummify until you become an antique. Other times, you think it might not be so bad, to belong as a piece in a set.

Work hours are spent, as you prefer, at the front half of the store where bright midday light presses through the wide rectangular wall of glass framing the heavy wooden door. The sills are lined with stained glass that warps the light into a spectrum of colors dancing about the old wood flooring when the sunbeams hit them just right and giving the shop an otherworldly yet homey glow. Mornings are your favorite, and you sit at the front desk watching red lights chase blues. You don’t notice time passing that way.

Two months, that’s how long you’ve been back. Two months, and you’re just about getting used to living in the quiet solitude, convincing yourself it’s more comfortable than lonely. There are hardly any customers. What’s the use of a brick and mortar antique shop when everything can be found online? The structure itself, is an antique. Redundant. Irrelevant. The lawyers said you can sell the place if you want to. Perhaps the mysterious benefactor who keeps the store financed might be interested in buying. But these are not thoughts you entertain so soon after tragedy.

So you pick up the current log book, its pages yellow and fraying at the edges, and write about the events that transpire during your shift. Letting go is the last thing on your mind.

 

***

 

Not all broken and forgotten things find their way to you. Sometimes you go looking for them.

You used to hate these flea market trips when you were younger. People are loud, the merchandise more so, and everyone is buying and selling and bargaining. You remember asking your mother, as she places a small piece of metalwork into the basket you carried,  _ what use are old things? _ _ Old things are for people to keep _ , she had said, voice soft and mellifluous in the cacophony of sounds. You didn’t understand then, sometimes you feel as if you still don’t.

Now that you’ve grown older, it doesn’t take long for you to realize it’s not just about old things. It’s abandoned things, forgotten things, lost things, all sorts of unwanted things. Now you scour these pop up sales on a vicious mission, though your objective remains to be determined. Hoarding runs in the family after all; there doesn’t have to be a reason other than compulsion. No one is there to mind anyway. And you, you like to collect broken things the most. Love the way your hands restore them to their former perfection so that they may find new home and be loved again.

This is where your paths cross for the first time.

Despite what others might be convinced to believe, there is no method to your madness. You simply walk along the stalls and kiosks, going on a feeling, waiting for shiny bits of glass or frayed leather to catch your eye. As of late, you’ve noticed in yourself a predilection for charms that have outlived their use; wooden plaques that once had served as protection wards or bearers of luck. Your only rule is to only buy whatever you can fit in the basket you carry around with you, and you reserve space for them in your inventory. You may be older and stronger now, but the rough fiber digging into the crook of your elbow hurts and irritates your skin still.

A broken piece of alder wood stands out in the neat rows of wooden sculptures lined along a straw mat. It’s nothing special at first glance, a broken piece of plaque and nothing more. But it calls to you. Anticipation thrums through you, powering your legs to approach the elderly man keeping watch. Sitting cross-legged on the mat, he appears to made of wood as well, his limbs gnarled like roots and his hands bark-like bearing calluses from crafting day in and out. But his eyes are friendly and kind, and he greets you with a grandfatherly smile when you squat down to make your purchase.

“I will take that,” says a rough voice from behind you.

You look up, glaring partly in annoyance and partly because your eyes are straining against the glare of the afternoon sun. The man, who is very much ignoring you, drops to his knee to take the piece of alder wood, and that’s when you see him.

He has his face turned away from you, offering you only his side profile. He’s younger than you thought, closer to your age. And tall. Strong. His shirt stretched over his wide shoulders and solid back. His arms, when he reaches for the wooden piece, are hardy. And his hands are veiny, his fingers long and calloused. Though he is dressed as any guy in his mid-twenties, somehow he gives off the aura that he’s much older than that. Somehow it feels as if he’s fighting in a war.

The air becomes thick and the soil that had felt cool under your sneakers suddenly feels warm. A bead of sweat trickles down the side of your face, and your throat goes dry. But not enough that you can’t find the words to speak.

“I’m sorry,” you cut in, “I’ve already spoken for it.”

The man, insufferable man, refuses to look at you. He addresses the old man, “How much for this, sir?”

“But I’m already taking it.” You’re scowling at his ear, at his piercings— three rings lined up on the lobe and a helix.

“It’s of no use to you,” he says roughly.

You hand tightens on your basket in defense. “Neither is it of any use to  _ you _ . I saw it first.”

He runs his fingers through his floppy dark hair. Sighs. Lifts his head, but still does not look at you. “Whatever she’s paying you, I can double it.”

“Excuse me.”

Your eyes trace the straight planes and angles of his face, a firmly set jaw, and— god— that perfect nose. There’s a tinge of annoyance around his dark eyes; you’re no stranger to this look, you expect it from people, even.

He ignores you still.

“ _ Excuse me _ .” You grab his arm and tug as hard as you can.

He swivels toward you, catches himself and anchors a knee on the soil and a hand on your elbow. A sweep of breaths, a flutter of dark eyelashes, and his gaze locks with yours.

The first thing that comes to you is the distinct feeling of falling. Then a blinding flash of light. Then fire— flames burning bright, white hot and suffocating. You’re choking on smoke. Your skin feels like ash. You try to breathe, but you can’t. Your lungs ache and burn. Water rushes into your nose. You’re drowning. And then finally, you succumb to the black empty void of nothingness.

 

***

 

“You did a No-No.” 

Sungjin ignores Wonpil wagging a finger at him. The Gatekeeper appeared out of thin air and deposited himself on the passenger side seat as Sungjin turned on the engine of your car to take you home. At most, Wonpil is an inconvenience and a nuisance but nothing Sungjin can’t handle. He’s had to tolerate him for years, what with the Watchdogs keeping a close eye on him.

Wonpil turns around, at you sleeping fitfully in the back. “You should have killed her.”

Sungjin doesn’t answer; he glances at you from the rearview mirror, at your furrowed brows and the sheen of sweat on your cheek. The flash of sunlight that had pierced through his long drawn winter is gone, obscured by the dark cloud of your nightmares.

“I know you’re ruthless but I didn’t think you’d be cruel. She’ll suffer. A lot. Then she’ll wish she were dead before her soul is claimed by Hell. Or something like it. It’s bad. Very bad. Why didn’t you kill her? There are rules about this.” Wonpil says it like Sungjin doesn’t know this already. As if he doesn’t know the curse of his species. That he hadn’t seen your death when he looked into your eyes. “Why are you keeping her?” Wonpil asks.

Entirely irrelevantly, not counting the dying, Sungjin doesn’t completely despise what he saw.

“She’ll be useful. I’ll kill her after she’s outlived her use.”

“That’s an idea, I guess? Nothing drives a demon wild quite like a soul Marked for Death. Using a human as bait. Smart. Will make hunting easier for you. But like I said. Cruel.” Wonpil’s smile says nothing of the gravity of their conversation. They may as well have been talking about the weather. Or the color of his shirt. Anything but the figurative elephant in the room.

“She has a knack for finding things,” Sungjin says. The change in subject is about as subtle as as a torrential summer storm in the city. “She can find the rest of the pieces I need.”

Wonpil is unnaturally pleased and his grin splits his face. But he seems appeased for now. “Bait and hunting dog. Nice.”

Sungjin stays quiet for the rest of the trip.

 

***

 

He should go, but he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to leave.

The shop is...something. A mess. The chaise lounge he set your sleeping form down on is a classic European piece in an elegant cream color but the surrounding pieces are a junkyard of novelty items and gag toys. There’s a charm to it perhaps, in the claustrophobic press of mismatched pieces forced in a home together. A home made up of abandoned, broken things. Sungjin hasn’t decided yet how he feels.

You stir and and whimper, then you open your eyes. Naturally, when you see him, your first instinct is to curl into a defensive position and reach out for the first thing you lay your hands on and point it at him. Your weapon: a rubber baguette. This does not faze you, and you lift your chin defiantly at him. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are we here? What happened?”

“I’m terrified,” he deadpans, only mildly amused at the bravado in your eyes. “You can put that thing away. I’m not here to hurt you.”

You thrust your makeshift weapon at him and it wobbles pathetically in the air. “That’s exactly the kind of thing someone who will inevitably hurt someone would say.”

True, that. He decides to switch tactics and picks up the piece of alder wood from the table. He runs his thumb over the jagged edges, as though to smoothen them out before he hands it to you. You hesitate, but take it after he offers it to you— gently, carefully— one more time.

“Do you know what that is?” There is no reason for him to drop his voice to make him sound harmless— absolutely no reason at all to put this much effort into making you feel at ease. Sungjin knows he doesn’t have to convince you to trust him with this much, but here he is anyway. This is the first and last time you will have to see him. Before the ninety-nine days are through, he will have to kill you. The least he can do is make the rest of your days as painless as he can muster. 

You seem to weigh the piece of wood in your mind as you weigh it in your palm. Interest lights up in your eyes as your crooked finger traces the faded ink painted on the wood. “Some kind of temple ward?”

He reaches into his pocket hands you a sheet of parchment, a page torn off an aged volume and written in an ancient language. What you don’t need to know is that Sungjin had to sneak into a highly guarded library to get this. And by guarded, he means the magical sort. There was a bit of brawn involved, a bit of deception, a lot of skill, but nothing he couldn’t handle by himself.

“What is this?” You ease out of the chaise and pad toward your work desk, fear momentarily forgotten and replaced with irrepressible curiosity. With the precision of experience and expertise, you lay the sheet of parchment over your backlit desk and pull your swing-arm magnifying glass over it. It takes you all of one look. You stumble backwards and narrow your eyes accusingly at him. “For the record, I’m temporarily holding off any offense I feel for and regarding your utter disrespect for this torn page. This is an artifact. It should be in a museum. Where did you get this?”

“Not important.” Sungjin drops a leather pouch on the table. “Tell me what else you see.”

“This really inspires a lot of trust and faith,” you say, opening the pouch and emptying its contents on the table anyway. “Thank you for putting me at ease. You seem very much to be of rightful moral standing.”

Sungjin allows himself a smile. “You’re welcome. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”

“I know I’m smart,” you mutter, arranging the pieces of wood against the outline shaped on the parchment. “Are you expecting me to read this, too?”

“That’s not necessary.” He stands behind you, looks over your shoulder as you assemble the fragments together. When he was carrying you in his arms, he thought you small and delicate, but seeing you now in your natural element is changing his mind. But of course, he shouldn’t really be thinking about you. “I need you to find the last piece.”

You look at him from over your shoulder, pink rising in your cheeks when your eyes take the slow path up his chest and to his eyes. “Some kind of lost family heirloom?”

The sun has almost disappeared now, and the stained glass panes lined along the window cast a warm purple light. “You don’t need to know that.”

You lick your lips nervously. “Then why do you want it? You don’t look like a fence. Sorry. Broker, if you prefer that term.”

He can tell he’s being sized up, appraised like any of your antiques on display. Sungjin wonders if you’ve made your decision to keep him. “It’s…” he tilts his head in thought, “of personal importance to me.”

“Okay,” you swallow. “Do you have a name?”

“I’m Sungjin.”

You smile in a way that makes you look soft, repeating his name on your lips memorizing the feel of the vowels and consonants on your tongue. Though it is not his True Name, Sungjin feels the tug of ownership sinking in his skin. You blink, slow and steady, and look up at him from under thick, dark lashes, and smile. It makes sense now, why even demons are warned against looking directly at the sun.

 

***

 

The hands on the grandfather clock begin to move, but even without it Sungjin knows the exact number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds you have left.

 

***

 

You find out Sungjin is a demon a few nights later while you’re taking out the trash. You’re just about to open the dumpster lid when a dark, gangly, slimy creature attacks. Sungjin appears out of nowhere and slays the monstrosity of a thing with a straight-blade, double-edged sword with the most beautiful ring pommel you’ve ever seen. Sixteenth century, at least.

Somehow, you convince yourself it’s all a bad dream until you confront him the following morning and he does not deny it.

“You don’t look like a demon. Or a demon hunter. Or a demon who is also a demon hunter,” you say, clutching on to your tumbler of watermelon juice. You’re taking this far more calmly than you think you should. Maybe you’re still dreaming and you need to do something drastic to wake up.

“What am I supposed to look like?” he asks, running his fingers through his hair to push it away from his face. You’re both sitting outside on the stair-stepped sidewalk, enjoying the sunrise. His sword is nowhere to be seen. Too bad. You wanted a closer look at the detail work on that pommel.

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t you be, I guess, wearing some kind of leather long-coat that’s like maxed out on charms and protective spells?” Not a plain shirt, ripped jeans, and battered sneakers. Definitely not in a snapback. Demons really shouldn’t be going around looking like the ideal boyfriend. It’s not very on-brand.

Sungjin raises a brow askance. “In the middle of summer? In a port town countryside?”

You rest your case. “I’m going to the fish market tomorrow before dawn. Do I need a bodyguard?”

His fingertips skim the shell of your left ear. Cold numbs the point of contact before heat washes it over. When your fingers comes up to the spot, you find a helix pierced through the cartilage. Sungjin offers no explanation, and you pretend not to notice he has one less piercing on his left ear.

 

***

 

Inevitably, the store feels too empty and the only solution you see to address the problem is to start hiring.

Jae is the only one to respond to a help wanted ad you posted a couple of days ago. Not even for the one online. He literally walked by the storefront, saw the ad stuck to the glass pane, and inquired immediately. It doesn’t take long for him to acclimate to the store. He himself is a mish-mash of dominant and obscure pop culture references dated as far back as anyone has dates on. Old books, tin toys, memorabilia from concerts and fairs, strange contraptions for mundane tasks— Jae fits right in and makes a home behind the counter.

He suggests taking digital inventory of the entire store and putting it up on a website a week after he’s hired. He’s one of those IT graduates with a head full of ideas and a restless energy to get things done. For the most part, you don’t mind and it gives you both something to do in the meantime. Jae goes about his job like a captain about to right his ship. He works too hard for someone who has nothing to prove, least of all to you.

“Your boyfriend kinda freaks me out,” Jae says about Sungjin the one time you two are slumped on the floor and cross-referencing the logbooks against Jae’s computer. Sungjin is standing in the shadows, watching but not really.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you answer, loud enough for Sungjin to hear.

“He’s always around. Why’s he always around?”

It occurs to you then that you’ve never asked. For some reason you’ve always just assumed you accidentally summoned him and now he’s attached to you until you complete the task he set for you to accomplish. “He’s a client.”

“A...client?”

“Yes. A client.”

You make a face. Jae makes a face. Neither of you are mentally over the age of five.

 

***

 

“So how long do I have do find this missing piece?”

Sungjin doesn’t answer.

“What happens when I don’t find it? Do I die? Do you take my soul? Am I sacrificing my first-born here?”

Sungjin still doesn’t answer.

 

***

 

Now that you’ve been made aware of the existence of demons and the evil that lurks within the shadows, you wonder out loud if this is directly correlated to you always being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“You’re just unlucky,” Sungjin says, flicking the putrefaction off his sword. Black slime spatters on the concrete, and it hisses angrily before disappearing in smoke.

“I can’t be that unlucky if you always show up and save me.”

“Just stay close to me,” he says, and you’re no fool to put meaning into those words, so you just nod and pretend you don’t know Sungjin is always keeping watch.

 

***

 

Some nights Sungjin comes to the antique shop like it’s home. He finds you on your desk, diligently searching for the missing piece. It takes a while for you to notice his presence, but he never minds. He likes watching you work.

“Been there long?” you ask, stretching your arms over your head. Leaning back on your chair, you hang your head over the backrest to find him leaning against a writing desk.

“Any progress?”

“Not really. But I’m close to something, I can feel it.”

He lets the silence wash over you both, allows the prosaic feeling of simply not being alone penetrate the loneliness he keeps for company. If he keeps still enough, he can see himself become another antique. Just another old thing no one wants anymore. Perhaps then, he will truly belong here. With you. Belong like the way Jae just fits in your life, makes you laugh with jokes that bear no sense, and offers you a life beyond the corners of this shop.

“You know,” you tell him, hooking your arm on the backrest and resting your head on your elbow. In your eyes is something unreadable that makes Sungjin think you’re missing a few pieces too. “I wanted to be a museum curator. That’s why I studied Art. I wanted...well I didn’t want  _ this _ . This mess. I wanted to work in a shiny building. With shiny pieces of art in perfect rows and telling only the best of stories. I wanted to study and search for stories and show people old things are not that bad.”

Instead, here you are now trapped and cursed, with a demon for company. “Even lost things have good stories to tell,” he says, resisting the urge to step closer and erase the tiredness around your eyes. “There is beauty, even in imperfection.”

“Maybe.” You cast your eyes down and sigh, wrought by exhaustion that is more mental than anything else. 

Sungjin wishes it were a demon threatening you instead so he could draw his sword and slay the monsters that chase you. Melancholy, he has no way of defeating. Nothing in his training has prepared him for exorcising the loneliness that clouds your eyes when you forget he’s always looking.

 

***

 

Sungjin fights hoping one day he’ll get careless and finally be laid to rest. But when you call out for him in your sleep, nothing will ever tear him away from this life and the next so long as you are in it. You cling to him, once you wake from your nightmares. The way you slip into his arms and curve into his breathing space makes him feel almost human with the way his blood rushes like a hurricane.

“I was on fire. And then I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe,” you sob, pulling him closer and burying your face into his warmth. With every soft hiccup, you press into him, closer and closer, as if there’s a line you need to cross in order to stay there forever.

When he holds you, he does so with care, afraid his unchecked strength will hurt you.  _ It’s only a nightmare _ , he wants to say. But he can no longer bring himself to lie to you. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I promise.”

In the morning when you wake up still tangled in his arms and looking at him like he’s supposed to be there, it’s him who feels a surge of embarrassment rise up his cheeks and ears. You laugh into his shirt like it’s the most natural thing— that he belongs here too, in your bed, in your arms. In your life. Sungjin begins the doubt the reality of this moment, suspects he’s been caught in some trap and can’t get out. But your words, muffled by his chest, is enough to prove this is real.

“I’ve kept you here too long. You have to go slay demons now, don’t you. I wish you didn’t have to so we can stay here like this.”

When no more words are spoken, he takes this as permission to leave. He does so reluctantly.

 

***

 

Every time a purchase is made, no time is lost filling up the space it leaves behind. You used to think of it in terms of stock and inventory, of supply and demand, but now you know it’s because loss is painful. Loss leaves scars. Loss leaves a void that is cold and empty.

What you learn about dealing with the void is this: it’s never about the emptiness or what it does, but what you do to fill up the void to convince yourself it doesn’t exist.

So you collect things, obsess over things, things no one else will want, broken things you can fix and find new homes for, abandoned things you can convince someone to want again.

Because at the end of the day, it’s never about the  _ thing _ but the memories locked within them. Really, it’s the stories you collect: of children’s laughter, of mothers brushing their daughter’s hair before bed, of fathers winding up music boxes, and of summers perfectly captured in seashells.

Maybe that’s why you still can’t decide whether you love the antique shop or hate it.

 

***

 

Sungjin, too, searches for answers, and every day he grows more and more desperate to find them. 

 

***

 

Younghyun and Wonpil arrive one after the other, not even a full day apart. Younghyun is beautiful, sharp and striking, in an elusive and illusory way and you’re not quite sure if he’s real or if he’s a work of classic art you’ve somehow acquired by accident. But Younghyun walking into your shop is no accident, not with his determined steps and the sense of purpose he brings at the door. He comes to you first, eye gleaming with mischief that means to charm. He asks to borrow Sungjin. As if a demon is yours to own.

“You must be desperate to want my help, but color me intrigued,” Younghyun says to Sungjin, “A ceasefire, it is.” To you, he says, “I promise to bring him back, in once piece as he is.”

Sungjin leaves with Younghyun but you’re not worried. Even without Sungjin’s eyes telling you volumes of promises of his return, you just know. So you watch their backs grow smaller in the distance until you don’t see them anymore.

Wonpil is a curiosity, much like the items in your shop. He flutters about the pretty trinkets— costume jewellery, wooden charms, music boxes, and snow globes— like a butterfly through a garden of flowers. Unlike Younghyun, there seems to be no reason for him to be here.

“I’m curious by nature,” he says, sounding like a song. “I want to see what happens.”

Jae and Wonpil instantly, perhaps not surprisingly, do not get along. They argue and bicker within minutes of meeting each other but it does not deter Wonpil from staying or coming back the following day to ask about the items in the shop. His questions are never ending and Jae’s patience is finite as a teaspoon.

When Sungjin returns, he is not happy to find Wonpil there either, but Wonpil just grins and makes himself more comfortable in spaces you’ve never seen filled the way these new people affix themselves like they were made to be there. Suddenly, the shop feels full in a way that it didn’t before. There is laughter, loud and raucous, in the mornings when there had been quiet. In the afternoons, the smell of snacks replace the smell of varnish and must. At night, when you sleep, you look forward to tomorrow. The antique shop is a collection of past memories waiting to be rediscovered, the life you’ve known and the life you’ve resigned yourself to, but now it’s become a place to make new memories in. Stories that will stay with you forever.

 

***

 

The walls are still the same, but when your fingers touch the peeling wallpaper along the narrow hallway to your bedroom, everything feels new. 

Sungjin’s laugh is low and surreal in your ear when he catches you on the top landing. It’s a sound you can get lost in if you’re not careful; a distant light in a dark forest but you’re not sure if it will lead you home but you can’t help follow it anyway. His big hands wrap around your waist, and you half-fall to your knees in a fit of giggles. As you wriggle free, your heart races in your chest, faster than you can run after carelessly poking his nose. Sungjin lifts you off your feet, twists you around and presses your back flush against the wall.

Sungjin’s laugh fades and the light in his eyes transforms into something dark and primal. “Do you think you can outrun me?”

Your eyes are transfixed on his lips, you try to look away, see his adam’s apple bob in his throat, and your gaze is back to his mouth again. “I don’t think there’s anywhere I can run where you can’t find me.”

“I’ll always find you.” Sungjin says it like a warning, but your hands tangle in his shirt anyway and pull him near. He pins you against the wall with his thigh wedged between your legs and your head caged between his arms. He brushes his nose down your cheek and you shudder into him.

“Then I’ll never be lost,” you say, holding his gaze— eyes that seem to gleam gold in the late afternoon light. “You’ll never lose me.”

Sungjin kisses you.

He almost pulls away, but you smile into his lips and throw your arms around his neck to keep him there. You’re not sure what to expect, if demons taste differently than humans, but Sungjin’s mouth is sweet in a way you know is bad for you. 

Expected, however, is the way Sungjin is hesitant as you are eager.

“Don’t be afraid,” you say, breathlessly. “It’s okay.”

His brows furrow. “I’m not afraid. You should be afraid.”

“Of what?” You lean forward to kiss him again, lips and tongue inviting him closer. “Of you?”

Sungjin sighs into the kiss and tilts his head to the side to give you more of him. Your hands wander his chest, his face, and anchor themselves in his hair, on the back of his head. You gasp and tremble, but he keeps you anchored to his chest. When you part to breathe, his eyes are closed and he struggles to catch his breath.

“You…” his voice is husky and unsure. “Maybe we should…”

Your loosen your fingers from his hair and smoothen out the tension in his shoulders. “We should what?”

Sungjin squeezes his eyes shut. You look at his hand, painfully strained and grasping at the wall. “We should…”

You kiss his nose. “We should?”

You slip from his grasp and sneeze from the cloud of plaster that bursts from the wall. Sungjin’s eyes are wide and his lips fall agape as he stares at his hand, as if he’s surprised at his own strength. He wears a too confused an expression to ever come out from the fearless demon hunter you’ve known him to be. There’s a flush on his face and, slowly, he falls a step back.

“Maybe...we shouldn’t after all…” he mutters shyly, eyes pointedly avoiding the hand-sized crater in the wall.

You cover your face with your hands and laugh.

Even this feels right.

You take his hand in yours, brush the debris away, and kiss his knuckles. Of all the lost things you’ve picked up, Sungjin is the only one that makes you feel as if though it’s you who has been found. That all your life, you’ve been wandering in search for lost and forgotten things only so you can be found by him. When he turns to leave, hearing Yonghyun’s voice calling for him from downstairs, you begin to wonder if there’s any way at all to keep him forever.

 

***

 

“Are you ever going to tell her?” Younghyun asks.

Younghyun is also a hunter. The angel blood in his veins makes him just as volatile and powerful as Sungjin but Younghyun is far better adapted to living around humans than a demon can ever hope to be. Unlike Sungjin, Younghyun’s physicality is bound in human flesh. Sungjin’s vessel isn’t fully quite his just yet. There is simply too much demon in him.

“She doesn’t need to know.” His eyes wander the darkness in search of the amorphous, shapeshifting demon they had been hunting since moonrise. This one is elusive, traveling through shadows and leaving no trace of its dastardly activity.

“You’re not protecting her by not telling her.”

But Sungjin protects you as best as he can, the only way he knows how. He’s already failed so much. First by being unable to stay away from you, second in wanting you in ways that make him feel like there is hope for him yet, and last by how his search for a cure to save you remains without answers.

“You don’t have much time left,” Younghyun reminds him.

But Sungjin doesn’t need reminding.

  
  


**_***_ **

 

There’s a boy in your dreams.

He stands across you in a vast white emptiness, dressed in black, tall, wiry, and stoic. He says nothing. Does nothing. The silence echoes uncomfortably in your ears. 

 

***

 

When you open your eyes, Sungjin’s worried gaze fills your vision. He’s carrying you in his arms, holding you against the warmth of his chest. It’s nighttime. The air is hot and humid, and it fills your lungs with a sick heavy sense of dread.

Vaguely, you remember meeting up with a middleman regarding a potential lead regarding the missing plaque piece. You met with the middle-aged lady at a tea house somewhere in the city. You remember thinking she was pleasant. Nice, even. Though the deep red of her lips had you feeling a little off, you went on with the meeting. Sungjin needed that missing piece. You’d promised to help him find it. That was at sunset. “What happened?”

Sungjin’s eyes cloud with a darkness that is both worry and anger. It is not an expression you are a stranger to, but tonight it’s to you he is directing this look. Again, this isn’t new. He always seems to be at a loss whether he should worry about you or be angry at you. His hold on you tightens, the arm beneath your back pulls you closer until you’re chest to chest, and the arm under your knees snakes further in, his hand is digging into your thigh. When he looks down to speak to you, his chin brushes against the top of your head.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he murmurs, and though he masks the roughness in his voice you feel it in the way he thrums over you. “You’re safe now.”

“You found me.”

“I always will.”

“You can put me down now,” you say. “I can walk.”

“I will not.” Sungjin is stubborn, too. Determined to a fault. But there is something strange in his voice that you can’t place. Something you know he will never tell you, but you’re just as determined to find out.

“Sungjin, put me down.”

He stops walking, the entirety of his body seemingly against it with the way his shoulders stiffen and in the mechanical quality of his movements. “As you wish.”

He settles you down on your feet, but you don’t let go of his arm. Your hands find their way around his elbow, and down the corded muscles of his forearm. Sungjin doesn’t react when your fingers intertwine with his, and he says nothing as you pull him to walk forward with you.

You want to know everything, more so knowing Sungjin will tell you nothing. But for tonight, as you lay your head against his arm, this would be enough.

 

***

 

This is how the shop looks like when all of your lost boys are around: a mismatched set of tea cups and saucers; porcelain, ceramic, and glass, and something else you can’t quite define. All of them come in different colors and designs, and yet they seem to fit together. Like they belong together and always have.

You watch them, eyes trained on their every move, every laugh, every happy sound they make. You want to keep them forever it eats you up inside knowing everything that goes through this store leaves in the end.

 

***

 

“It’s a sealing plaque,” Sungjin answers when you ask him what it is he’s looking for. What it is that he’s asked of you to find.

You’ve been awakened by another nightmare. Of drowning in fire, spitting out ash from your lungs then being submerged into water that feels less like water and more like a burning inferno seeping into your skin, dragging you down and down until everything is darkness. You awake to a sweat, gasping for air. It doesn’t take long for Sungjin to come to you, taking you in his arms and holding you until your breathing calms. 

“What does it seal?” You’re all too aware of his weight against you as you sit together, side by side on your bed with his arm around your shoulders. Perhaps too aware of all the places he is pressed against you. Too aware that all you’re wearing is an oversized shirt and your underwear.

“Demons.” Sungjin is looking down into your eyes, heat and intent in his gaze. He is so, so close. The way you curled up against him, if you swing your leg further, you can easily slide into his lap. You can press your mouth to his and know for sure if his kisses will live up to the way he is looking at you now.

“Like you?” you breathe. Sungjin is always aware of your nightmares, always coming to you when you need him and even when you don’t. Right now, can he hear your silent plea?

Slowly, his hand curves over your calf, reaches up behind your knee, then tugs you over and guides you over his thighs. His other hand wraps around the small of your back, cradling you to him. “Exactly like me.”

“Seal you how, exactly?” Just the touch of your sensitive skin against the rough fabric of his jeans and the softness of his shirt sends a rush of sensations through your body. His calloused fingers are rough against your thigh, and you lose your mind at your intense reaction to such a slight pressure.

“Into this vessel.” His hands move up your skin to rest at the curve of your hip. His fingers toy at the edges of your shirt, and a delicious pressure thrums between your legs.

“Then you’d be mortal.” You press harder into him, finding purchase and trying to regulate this sensation, somehow ease your way in before you spontaneously combust in his arms.

His fingers stroke your back, and his other hand on your hip grabs a fistful of your shirt and pulls your body against his. “Mortal enough.”

“Mortal enough to get hurt and die?” At this point you know you’re in over your head, and this is the part where you give it your all. Your everything to Sungjin. Even without him asking, you are his.

“Mortal enough to do more than just this.” Sungjin runs the tip of his nose down the slope of your neck, and helpless to his pull you tilt your head to the side because you want more. He runs his fingertips down your jawline, you neck, your collarbones, the skin just beneath the loose v-neck of your shirt, and you arch into him desperate for the sparks of sensation his touch leaves in its wake.

“Sungjin, it’s—” you start to say, but Sungjin interrupts you with a brush of his lips against yours, licking into you mouth, sweet and sticky like the summers you know. Your arms coil around his neck, and your fingers tangle in his hair. “You can touch me. It’s okay.”

“Is it, really?” he asks, sliding his hands down your waist in long heavy drags. His gaze is locked on yours, searching for hesitation, perhaps an opening to remind you he is a monster beneath this shell. His hands anchor themselves on your hips, digging so hard you struggle to keep your eyes open from the feeling it kindles in your chest.

Sungjin presses his lips against the hollow of your collarbones, and it feels both reverent and insolent you grind against him in retaliation. Yet it is you whose voice gets caught between a scream and a whisper as your body aches with overwhelming need. Sungjin hisses into your skin, rocks up against you as his tongue greedily laps up the sensitive skin on your clavicles. You gasp at the gentle friction of his jeans, at the way the pleasure traces through your underwear. His other arm is behind you now, and you feel the flex of his muscles as he supports you arching wildly in response to the direct pressure between your thighs. He holds you like this, controls the way you move against him, the way you feel him over your mound through the fabric between your skin and his.

The rush of heat up your spine and your toes curling in the wave upon wave of goodness has you gasping and tearing up. When Sungjin looks at you like you are the sun and the light of this world, you find an anchor and the feelings of restlessness and fear are no more. With half-open eyes and the feeling of the bruises Sungjin’s lips and hands will leave in the morning, you bend, and shake, and break as release surges through you. As the tremors of your pleasure slowly ebb away, Sungjin’s gaze greets you. In his eyes is softness and worry, but also something else.

Sungjin lifts your palm and places a kiss there.

 

***

 

The dreams come every night now, as does the boy who is at the center of these dreams. Most nights, you are given a moment of silence with this boy before the white fades into darkness and you’re being dragged from the light and fire slides down your throat and your lungs burst with black tar and ash. You fight your way to the surface, but it’s too far to reach. Other nights it’s standing with this boy on a boat that leads to nowhere. He holds the paddle in one hand, but does not row. You merely stand there, waiting.

“Who are you?” you ask. It is a dream, perhaps it doesn’t matter. But it is your dream and you demand to know.

The boy doesn’t answer.

“Don’t you have a name?”

He tilts his head in thought. “Dowoon,” he says, his voice resounding inside your head instead of through your ears. “I like Dowoon.”

“Will you tell me what’s going on here?” You’re used to hearing your own voice echo in the quiet spaces you occupy. In the antique shop, there’s never been anyone to speak back. Until recently, that is. Now you find it hard not to raise you voice just to be heard over the gaggle of children in grown bodies taking up space in your life.

Silence.

“Why am I having these dreams?” You study him with wide eyes, hoping his mask will slip and you’ll see a semblance of emotion, a flicker of fear or perhaps recognition.

Still, he doesn’t answer.

“Am I going to die?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

He points behind you, and you look over your shoulder to find the grandfather clock ticking, ticking, ticking. It’s never done that for as long as you can remember.

 

***

 

Younghyun taps a long thin reed against the inside of his wrist, and Sungjin doesn’t miss the reference to the ticking of the clock. “So you’ve found the answers you’re looking for?”

Sungjin nods, though he feels no obligation to respond to Younghyun’s queries. He’d gone to visit a former mentor, an aging monk who’d rescued him from his descent into madness and taught him how to live within a human vessel that he, too, had saved from the throes of death. “It can be done.”

He can save you.

“Might I suggest,” Wonpil says, raising his eyes at them and grinning as though death does knock on your door. “You deal with this one particular shadow demon first, after all it won’t do that you’ve been hunting for days and it’s still gotten away. No, that won’t do. No demon escapes you. Whether it is a NIghtmare or a Horror, you always find a way to slay them.”

The sides of Younghyun’s lips lift into a smirk as he turns to Sungjin. “In desperate times?”

Sungjin grits his teeth. “I will not use her to draw this demon out.”

“What choice do you have?” Wonpil offers lightly, “Tick-tock, goes the clock. Your allegiance lies, where again?”

“You’ll be there,” Younghyun says, relentless in his rhythmic tapping. “And I’ll be there. And after we’ve dealt with this demon you can begin your search for your cure.”

Sungjin is not blind to Younghyun and Wonpil putting him at the center of the balance weighing the worth of the innocent lives the demon has taken and will take, and you. “My allegiance is to life,” he says gruffly, “I protect life. All of it.”

“Are you?” Wonpil asks with sparkling eyes, “Because it seems that all you’re protecting is that woman.”

Protecting you, having you, means having a little more light than the world has to offer to someone like him. And Sungjin will hold on that spark, nurture that tiny kindle that you’ve started in his heart. Having you means carrying the sun with him no matter what darkness shrouds the path he’s chosen to take. Sungjin has never wanted to keep something so much it doesn’t matter if the foundation he has built falls to to ground.

 

***

 

The waning moon feels like a countdown, and in a way it is.

Sungjin senses you even before you reach out to tap his shoulder. He knows you’ve sidestepped to the right, but looks over to the left anyway. It makes you laugh, and guilt stabs at him. But the thought that, at least, you will be close to him is all Sungjin needs to keep him grounded for the night.

“For once, I found you first,” you tell him, moving into his line of sight all smiles and bright eyes. “Why’d you ask me out here?”

Desperation, he wants to confess. The desperation of a demon trapped in a corner. He feels it now, the restlessness and the anxiousness knowing you’re open and vulnerable and he’s been nothing but guarded and deceitful. The two of you stand face to face at the top of the stairs, one of the many uphills of this little town he’s come to know as home.

“You know I’ll always protect you, don’t you?” he murmurs softly, caressing the shell of your ear where he’d left his mark of ownership. This is how he knows where you are at all times, a beacon connecting him to you. He feels sick he’s had to take your freedom away from you— wonders now if it’s worth betraying your trust like this.

“What’s this all of a sudden?” Laughing, you reach out and touch the side of his face with the back of your hand. “Are you not feeling well? Who are you?”

Sungjin raises his hand and, with his fingers, gently draws your eyelids to a close.

 

***

You’re standing in the middle of the street and you’re not sure why or how you even got here in the first place. The last thing you remember is closing shop with Jae, reminding him to come early the following morning because you’re taking him to an open house the next town over. Between then and now is a blank space, and something clutches at your chest. It’s the becoming-too-familiar feeling of falling into your nightmares, the one with the boy, Dowoon, and his foretelling of your death.

Is tonight the night you die, you wonder.

A thick fog curls around your feet and fingers of cold clamp around the back of your neck. A distant hissing laugh pours into your space and all of a sudden you can’t breathe as a vicious force holds you down against the concrete.

But just as fast as you are knocked down are you freed from the malevolent shadow hovering over you. You scramble to your feet and back away, eyes locked on Sungjin coming down on the monster like a flash of light. His sword swipes at its head in one clean strike and off tumbles a misshapen skull, black blood like asphalt sizzling on the concrete. The scream that had caught in your throat comes out as a strangled breath as it’s eyes fall upon you.

“Woman Marked for Death,” gurgles the disembodied head. “Marked by the demon who hunts his kind. Used as  _ bait _ .” It spits out the word bait as it spits out a laugh. “Ah, truly what a demon you’ve kept.” Then its remains ebb away in smoke and dust.

You turn to Sungjin who refuses to meet your eyes as he picks you up from the ground. “It said something...it said I’m Marked. For death. Is it true?” Sungjin checks you for injuries, but you push his hands away. “Tell me it’s not true. The nightmares I’m having...that’s all they are, right? I’m just really unlucky, right? Tell me. Sungjin, please.”

He raises his gaze to meet yours, and in his black eyes are all the answers you seek. “You’re not unlucky. You’re cursed. Because of me. Because you looked into my eyes, you’ve become Marked. It’s the mark that draws demons to you. They can’t help themselves around you.”

“Demons like you?” Your throat is dry and your chest tightens at every word.

“Exactly like me.”

The way your heart breaks, into pieces so small and fine like dust, there is no way to put them back together. Not when what’s been missing all along had always belonged to another. It isn’t fair, you think, that just when your hands hold on tight, right when you’re about to write your name to claim what you want to be yours, does your hand slip.

 

***

“It’s quiet here,” Jae muses out loud. “I can’t remember when it was this quiet.”

“It’s always been quiet.” Here, at the small antique shop you’ve come to know as home. You look at the empty spaces and the best ways to cover them up. “This is the way it should be.”

“For a while there,” Jae says, so soft yet you don’t have to strain your ears to hear, “I almost believed it shouldn’t have to be.”

 

***

Sungjin is relentless on his quest to retrieve the cure. Younghyun warns him of the dangers and Wonpil taunts him with a reminder that Sungjin reaps what he sowed. Both of them always reminding him of his duty to serve the light. But Sungjin is selfish, and the only light and life he knows is you.

 

***

The antique shop, even with all the lights switched on at night, is still too dark. Every shadow cast on the walls, between the shelves, and behind every bit and bob you’ve accumulated over the years becomes a threat. You’ve become afraid of waking up alone, you do everything you can to not fall asleep. So you account for every item in your inventory. Your memory, perhaps, is too good. You bring out the old logbook, pages yellow with age, and retell yourself stories to pass the time.

In the mornings, Jae joins you on the floor— brings you a cup of coffee and listens to your stories. You read off the earlier logbooks as well, antiques in their own right. Your mother’s hand swirls and swoops in their lines and curves as she writes about how people are sad though they part with things that no longer have meaning to them.

You know Sungjin is bad for you, and yet your chest clenches and you can’t breathe at the thought that you can’t keep him. Maybe what’s bad is how much you wanted to keep him.

“Huh.” Jae pulls himself to his feet and putters around the shop, logbook clutched in his arms. “I’ve always wondered about this.” He picks up the small treasure chest on the counter, the one with the missing key, and shakes it by his ear.

“Does it say anything about it? A key? A secret latch? Anything?”

Jae hums a response and sets the logbook down on the counter. He examines the small chest, about the length of his hand, though you’ve done the same many times before. There’s nothing to see. It’s plain. Made of cherry wood. Simple. Mystery is what gives it value, so you’ve lead yourself to believe. All along you know it’s because sometimes the answers are disappointing.

Jae lifts the box high in the air and lets it drop to the ground.

You gasp and draw back, shocked more by unexpectedness of the act than the loss of this trinket. Once the surprise fades away, you lean closer to see what is there. The box is broken into two clean pieces, the top and the bottom. In between is a familiar piece of alder.

Jae picks it up, weighs the shard in his hand. He says nothing about the notes piled on your desk.

You say nothing about the grandfather clock or about the pendulum slowly coming to a halt.

 

***

Eventually you fall asleep.

Dowoon greets you as always. It is the same empty white space and the endless black river that runs through the void. This time he reaches out to take your hand, and with nothing left to lose you fit your fingers with his. Dowoon helps you up his boat, and a vision of you breathing in river water, acrid in your nose and your throat and your lungs, fills your eyes. This is how you will die: not your body, but your soul damned to suffer for eternity.

 

“Don’t worry,” Dowoon says, undisturbed by the reed boat lurching forward as your weight settles in. “I will visit often. I can do that.”

“Thank you,” you mutter as you take your seat. “That’s very kind of you.”

You try to not think about the shop, of Jae finding you wherever it was you’ve fallen asleep— hoping now that he wasn’t there to witness you fall unconscious. Jae is so quick to his emotions, he’ll blink and his eyelashes will be heavy with tears, and without you who will be there to remind him to breathe? 

Dowoon shakes his head, and ghost of a smile touches his lips as he walks to the edge of the boat to take hold of his oar. “You find lost things and find them homes.”

You know what he means is that he too is a lost boy in search of a home. Younghyun and Wonpil, too. Will they leave Jae behind? “Not anymore.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

Beneath you, the river rolls gently in waves that might convince you the ride will be like drifting toward the shore, gentle and calm. But you know better now. “I’m terrified.”

Dowoon stands next to you. “Hold my hand and don’t let go.”

Dying seems pointless now. You’ve been dead inside for far too long. “What happens if I let go?”

“Then you will drown for an eternity in this river of demons.”

“But isn’t that my fate?”

Dowoon shakes his head. He stares out into the whiteness above you as though he searches for a star to navigate to your destination. Strange, you always imagined hell to be dark. “He’s almost there,” he says. “He’s on his way to you. Please hold on a little longer.”

 

***

It’s not enough that your physical vessel is safe, Sungjin has to retrieve your soul before your voyage through the river is complete. Wonpil does not contest his request for safe passage, not with Younghyun’s blade at his neck. Sungjin is granted one chance, and one chance only.

“You know what this could cost you?” Wonpil asks, and it’s silly for him to ask because Sungjin’s known all along.

The whiteness is blinding at first, but once his eyes adjust to the brightness Sungjin sees what the light tries to hide. He treads carefully through the void, sword drawn at the ready. Sungjin walks up to the water, feels the cold swirl around his ankles, feels the darkness of the demons he’d condemned to suffering. The water reaches his knees now, and his sword slices the surface, leaves a line cutting through the gentle frolicking of the waves. Waist-deep, and he thinks it’s freezing. Or maybe it’s too hot it feels like it’s freezing. It doesn’t matter.

Sungjin takes a step forward, takes a breath, and lets the river take him.

 

***

Dowoon frowns.

“What’s the matter?” you ask. You follow his gaze out to the stretch of river behind you to where the smooth glassy surface of the water is broken by a wave collapsing upon itself. “What is that?”

“Just a little more,” Dowoon says and he squeezes your hand tighter. “You’re almost there. Just a little more.”

You squint to see better, but all there is is a new swell of water coming in after the other. But you feel something tug at you, it’s small but it’s there. “Sungjin?”

Dowoon tugs at your hand, and it’s only then that you realize you’re halfway to falling off. “Please be careful,” he says. “I cannot save you if you fall off. He must come to you. He must retrieve you himself. Those are the rules.”

“Made by who?”

This catches Dowoon unaware, and he blinks, opens his mouth only to close it again, then blinks some more. “Those are the rules,” he reiterates weakly.

The tug in your chest pulls and pushes, rises and falls, it feels like a tide reaching for the moon, like gravity. “I can’t see him. What’s happening?”

“He fights,” Dowoon answers, “He fights to make his way to you.”

You other hand grips the edge of the boat so tight, it splinters into your skin. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad,” Dowoon says, and you detect no hint of lie. “Bad, but not as bad as it can get. But…”

“But what?”

“At this rate…”

“Tell me.”

“The more he fights, the more he loses.”

“Loses how? Loses what?”

“His hold to him human vessel.”

And that’s all it takes for you to dive into the water, though you cannot see where you are going. You rely on a feeling, this feeling that will lead you home always.

 

***

 

...Sungjin is being dragged out of the fire, the ash that curled around his ankles falls away as the flames on his wrist are replaced by cool fingers tangling into his own. He coughs out smoke and water cools down his lungs. He feels the sun in the sky again, warm and bright overhead like his beloved summer. Through the burning in his eyes, he squints against the contrast and sees the outline of a person.

“Come back to me,” he hears. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

The rest of the words blur into the white noise of his mind, and though he struggles to hear it he fades into the darkness.

 

***

 

When you wake up, you are not alone. Sungjin is there, eyes clouded with worry. Just worry now, no more darkness. “Your eyes are brown. Did I just never notice that before?”

“Welcome back,” he answers, his voice a caress. “You silly girl, what did you do.”

“You were taking too long.”

He takes your hands in his, presses his lips against your knuckles. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

 

***

It’s not until much later that it sinks in Sungjin is human now.

He still hunts demons with Younghyun and bickers nonstop with Wonpil, but he’s human now. Permanently bound to the vessel he’d been revived in thanks to Jae. The shop is loud again, louder it seems now that Dowoon visits often though he doesn’t say much in the way of words.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Sungjin asks.

In the dimness of the storage room, you study the small changes in his features. He’s still as handsome as ever, though softer now perhaps, the harshness exorcised until that’s left is kindness. The rings on his ear have been replaced by wooden studs, refined pieces of the alder sealing plaque. He looks right in all the ways, you believe this is how Sungjin has always meant to be.

You return the logbook to its place on the bookshelf and fall into Sungjin in an inelegant rush of shoulders bumping into him and clumsy hands wrapping around his neck. “Nothing.”

But it isn’t nothing when Sungjin kisses you slowly, steadily, hot like he’s never kissed you before. His fingers weave through your hair, grasping a handful and holding you against him. He groans into your mouth as his tongue tastes you, as you taste him, as he tastes you tasting him. Your fingers wander beneath his shirt where his skin is hot, hot like the laugh that escapes his throat when he bends down to take your ear in his mouth.

“I came to you the same way lost things make their way to you.”

“We didn’t meet here,” you remind him, fingers tangled in the soft flannel of his shirt. “We met—”

“It’s not about where,” he whispers, lips nipping at the shell of your ear, “It’s you. You found me. It’s always been about you finding me.”

“We found each other,” you manage to say between breaths. This feeling consumes you, swallows you whole.

Sungjin lifts you to straddle his waist, his kisses becoming needier. But suddenly he stops.

Jae clears his throat from the top of the stairs leading down to basement. His glasses gleam threateningly in the distance. “New house rules,” he announces loud enough for the entire shop to hear. “No hanky-panky in the storage room.”

Wonpil appears behind him. “No hanky-panky, period.”

“Hanky-panky in the bedroom, at least,” Younghyun offers, voice traveling from deeper within the store but omnipresent just the same.

“Oh!” you hear, also from the upper level, the storefront maybe. Dowoon. “Hanky-panky is a euphemism!”

Sungjin sets you back on your feet ever so gently before stalking up the stairs after Jae, Younghyun, and Wonpil who’ve gone running and screaming.

As you right yourself, you think, this is what it feels like to finally find home.

 

END


End file.
